Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[GarfunkeL]

I did not know that! Will have to remember to try it.

 

[Erebus]

In the Dragonlance setting, the schools of magic you can use depend on your alignment. For instance, Abjuration is only available to good wizards, Alteration to neutral wizards and Necromancy to evil wizards. Consequently, in the Krynn trilogy, a good wizard won't have access to exactly the same spells as a neutral wizard, and neither will have access to spells such as Animate Dead.

The many evil wizards you fight should be able to use necromancy, but they never actually do...

 

[Jo498]

In the Krynn games one cannot pick evil player characters, I am not even sure about true neutral. I also think one cannot pick evil characters in the later FR games. But in the FR games any (incl. good aligned) PC cleric has access to harming spells like cause wounds, slay living, poison etc. Whereas these spells are simply missing in the Krynn games. And I think they also dropped animate dead from the later games.

BTW can anyone point out to a howto/solution of the saving error problem. I had these games on an older computer and PoR played/saved without any problems but I cannot save characters in any of the other games; there is some path problem. I vaguely recall this problem from former times but I am totally at loss how to solve this as I am not familiar with the workings of DOS besides the bare minimum.

 

[octavius]

BTW can anyone point out to a howto/solution of the saving error problem. I had these games on an older computer and PoR played/saved without any problems but I cannot save characters in any of the other games; there is some path problem. I vaguely recall this problem from former times but I am totally at loss how to solve this as I am not familiar with the workings of DOS besides the bare minimum.

You need to set the correct DosBox paths in the config file.
Been years since I played the GB games, so I don't recall the details, but they should be available earlier in this thread.

 

[ProphetSword]

In the Krynn games one cannot pick evil player characters, I am not even sure about true neutral. I also think one cannot pick evil characters in the later FR games. But in the FR games any (incl. good aligned) PC cleric has access to harming spells like cause wounds, slay living, poison etc. Whereas these spells are simply missing in the Krynn games. And I think they also dropped animate dead from the later games.

You can play True Neutral in the Krynn games. The only alignments not allowed are the evil ones (Chaotic Evil, Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil).

Every Forgotten Realms game allows you to pick any of the nine alignments present in the AD&D game system. There are no limitations, except when you pick a class that is limited (Paladins must be Lawful Good, Rangers must be Good, etc).

 

[Desiderius]

In the Krynn games

Best Avatar on the Codex

Is that only from the Easter Egg dungeon, or is available earlier in the game. Can't remember.

 

[ProphetSword]

In the Krynn games

Best Avatar on the Codex

Is that only from the Easter Egg dungeon, or is available earlier in the game. Can't remember.

Are you talking about his avatar of Sir Dargaard, who you encounter in Sir Dargaard’s Tomb in Champions of Krynn?

 

[Desiderius]

In the Krynn games

Best Avatar on the Codex

Is that only from the Easter Egg dungeon, or is available earlier in the game. Can't remember.

Are you talking about his avatar of Sir Dargaard, who you encounter in Sir Dargaard’s Tomb in Champions of Krynn?

Ah, I didn't play Champs. Recognized it from Dave's Challenge way back.

 

[ProphetSword]

In some other games, like Unlimited Adventures, the image is often used to portray a spectral being. The use of artwork sometimes got lazy in the later games.

 

[weirwood]

In the Dragonlance setting, the schools of magic you can use depend on your alignment. For instance, Abjuration is only available to good wizards, Alteration to neutral wizards and Necromancy to evil wizards. Consequently, in the Krynn trilogy, a good wizard won't have access to exactly the same spells as a neutral wizard, and neither will have access to spells such as Animate Dead.

That's generally true, but in Dark Queen of Krynn, the Mislaxa temple sells random spell scrolls that let your mages learn most, though not all, cross-class spells. I've heard this called a bug, but I suspect it was a deliberate design decision, so parties with only a single mage don't get screwed out of important spells. Or maybe there's a lore explanation? I don't know much about Dragonlance background, but IIRC, on Ansalon, spellcasters aren't divided into three orders? Something like that.

I might as well write this up for future reference, for anyone who wants to replay the series; these are the spells that remain exclusive in DQK:

White:
Protection from Evil 10' (use a cleric)
Protection from Good 10' (useless)
Bestow Curse (useless)
Remove Curse (use a cleric)
Charm Monster
Minor Globe of Invulnerability (use the regular globe)
Feeblemind (useless)
Hold Monster
Mass Charm
Otto's Irresistible Dance (useless)

Red:
Knock (use a thief)
Strength (use Enlarge instead)
Slow
Dimension Door (gimmick)
Fire Touch
Stone to Flesh

All others can be shared, if you're patient and buy enough scrolls. What it boils down to is White Mages have a few neat save-or-else spells, but Red Mages advance faster and hence their Delayed Blast Fireballs will do more damage, and they can more reliably cut through magic resistance.

 

[Cael]

In the Dragonlance setting, the schools of magic you can use depend on your alignment. For instance, Abjuration is only available to good wizards, Alteration to neutral wizards and Necromancy to evil wizards. Consequently, in the Krynn trilogy, a good wizard won't have access to exactly the same spells as a neutral wizard, and neither will have access to spells such as Animate Dead.

That's generally true, but in Dark Queen of Krynn, the Mislaxa temple sells random spell scrolls that let your mages learn most, though not all, cross-class spells. I've heard this called a bug, but I suspect it was a deliberate design decision, so parties with only a single mage don't get screwed out of important spells. Or maybe there's a lore explanation? I don't know much about Dragonlance background, but IIRC, on Ansalon, spellcasters aren't divided into three orders? Something like that.

I might as well write this up for future reference, for anyone who wants to replay the series; these are the spells that remain exclusive in DQK:

White:
Protection from Evil 10' (use a cleric)
Protection from Good 10' (useless)
Bestow Curse (useless)
Remove Curse (use a cleric)
Charm Monster
Minor Globe of Invulnerability (use the regular globe)
Feeblemind (useless)
Hold Monster
Mass Charm
Otto's Irresistible Dance (useless)

Red:
Knock (use a thief)
Strength (use Enlarge instead)
Slow
Dimension Door (gimmick)
Fire Touch
Stone to Flesh

All others can be shared, if you're patient and buy enough scrolls. What it boils down to is White Mages have a few neat save-or-else spells, but Red Mages advance faster and hence their Delayed Blast Fireballs will do more damage, and they can more reliably cut through magic resistance.

It is a bug.

What happens is that the spells on the scroll is taken from a fixed pool that is dependent on the position of the scroll in the shop. The scroll type is temporarily fixed upon a certain event (loading the map, loading a game, loading the shop, restarting the programme, I am not sure). Once it is "fixed", it will always pick from the same pool regardless of what type of scroll it happens to be at the time. You can note this when you bring a massive bunch of cash to the shop and start buying scrolls multiple times. Note the colors of the first set of scrolls. When you return, if the scroll colours changed for that slot, you have a chance of getting a red spell on a white scroll or vice versa for that scroll.

 

[Ysaye]

Can you migrate your Dragonlance party to Spelljammer?

Probably if you can beat Baldur's Gate 3, you can get a spelljammer ship to pick up your original Dragonlance party....

 

[Null Null]

In some other games, like Unlimited Adventures, the image is often used to portray a spectral being. The use of artwork sometimes got lazy in the later games.

Indeed. That pic was reused for Spectral Minions in Death Knights and reworked in VGA for Dark Queen of Krynn and Pools of Darkness (they removed the mustache in Pools for Brimwulf).

They were even lazier with combat icons. The same dude with a sword got used for Royal Guards (Curse), BC Troopers (Secret), Zhentil Fighters (Pools), and Road Guards (FRUA). There are countless other examples.

 

[madrigal]

Of course, after trying it on a PC I re-loaded and did it later only with the hired Hero.

Another cool thing is if you animate Hero even though he betrays you to fight for Tyranthraxus you can still control him. If you move away from him he will take a swipe, but you can make him hit Tyranthraxus by confirming the attack ally prompt. My latest run he struck the killer blow. You do have to take him out afterwards however, for the battle to end.

 

[CuckMasher]

I played about 5 hours of pool of radiance and ran out of steam today. I see the appeal, and I'm fine with no mouse support. But there is just so much trash combat and so much fighting with the interface. This is not a well designed keyboard interface (see any roguelike for comparison). I like the setting, general story, and general idea of the game. I like the d and d implementation. But there are just so many games out there that I don't have to fight with. I'm sure it was awesome in 1988, but it's pretty rough now.

 

[Daemongar]

In some other games, like Unlimited Adventures, the image is often used to portray a spectral being. The use of artwork sometimes got lazy in the later games.

I recognized that guy immediately from the end of Secret of the Silver Blades. Sir... something or other, the brother of someone or such. I honestly played the game, completed it, and never went back.

 

[mondblut]

BTW can anyone point out to a howto/solution of the saving error problem. I had these games on an older computer and PoR played/saved without any problems but I cannot save characters in any of the other games; there is some path problem. I vaguely recall this problem from former times but I am totally at loss how to solve this as I am not familiar with the workings of DOS besides the bare minimum.

Paths in cfg files. Sometimes they are put there with trailing slash but should not have one. Or the other way around, beats me. If the game doesn't see the save folder where it should be, try adding or removing trailing slash with notepad.

 

[Erebus]

I played about 5 hours of pool of radiance and ran out of steam today. I see the appeal, and I'm fine with no mouse support. But there is just so much trash combat and so much fighting with the interface. This is not a well designed keyboard interface (see any roguelike for comparison). I like the setting, general story, and general idea of the game. I like the d and d implementation. But there are just so many games out there that I don't have to fight with. I'm sure it was awesome in 1988, but it's pretty rough now.

The later games improve on the interface. I played PoR after the Krynn trilogy, and it was a bit frustrating for that reason (though I enjoyed it enough to finish it).

Of all the GB games I've played, Dark Queen of Krynn is the most polished one when it comes to the interface and the visuals. It can be played without playing the first two Krynn games (the plot is almost completely unrelated). I like it, though it has the flaws of high-level D&D.

 

[Incendax]

Animate dead is definitely useful. The first time I fought Tyranthraxus I got my ass kicked hard. I literally won the fight with just a zombie fighter and everyone else dead.

And yes, the lone zombie walks back to Phlan and does the celebration.

 

[Jo498]

Indeed. That pic was reused for Spectral Minions in Death Knights and reworked in VGA for Dark Queen of Krynn and Pools of Darkness (they removed the mustache in Pools for Brimwulf).

They were even lazier with combat icons. The same dude with a sword got used for Royal Guards (Curse), BC Troopers (Secret), Zhentil Fighters (Pools), and Road Guards (FRUA). There are countless other examples.

Considering the computational restrictions of the time, all of this is somewhat excusable. I am not bothered much by using the picture of my Avatar (which is inspired by Sir Dargaard's tomb in Champions, the second game of the series I played ca. 30 years ago) both for good and evil spectral beings. But I find the overuse of e.g. that dude with a sword quite annoying, especially if it is within one game. E.g. in several games low level and high level thiefs use the same icon, the dudes with the sword are both Royal Guards and generic fighters/pirates in Curse. There's also a guy with a flail who is a generic evil warrior/soldier in Champions but a cleric in one of the FG games which is annoying if one plays them within a few weeks.

 

[Jo498]

I played about 5 hours of pool of radiance and ran out of steam today. I see the appeal, and I'm fine with no mouse support. But there is just so much trash combat and so much fighting with the interface. This is not a well designed keyboard interface (see any roguelike for comparison). I like the setting, general story, and general idea of the game. I like the d and d implementation. But there are just so many games out there that I don't have to fight with. I'm sure it was awesome in 1988, but it's pretty rough now.

The trash combat is a feature to some extent and actually worse in some later games of the series. The interface also has only two improvements (except for somewhat nicer graphics), namely the fix command for healing (all but PoR have this) and the "LOAD" in the encamp? menu which is only featured in DQoK and maybe PoD or the Savage Frontier.
I just played Pool and Champions in the last month or so and while there are tedious bits, PoR overall is a very good game and still enjoyable for me. As mentioned above, in some respects it has not been improved upon during the 4-5 years of this series. Champions has more trash combat and is only about 60% of the size, I think (about 15? standard sized dungeon lvls. whereas Pool has >20. It is more user-friendly with a starting party including already some lvl 2 PCs and easier with more spellcasters (but also far more spellcasters on the enemy side, the one bad thing about PoR is that enemy spellcasters are too rare, too weak and too often not placed in the back) and especially with a streamlined "storyline".

 

[ProphetSword]

I played about 5 hours of pool of radiance and ran out of steam today. I see the appeal, and I'm fine with no mouse support. But there is just so much trash combat and so much fighting with the interface. This is not a well designed keyboard interface (see any roguelike for comparison). I like the setting, general story, and general idea of the game. I like the d and d implementation. But there are just so many games out there that I don't have to fight with. I'm sure it was awesome in 1988, but it's pretty rough now.

Believe it or not, the game is better on a system that allows you to use a joystick. I was playing it just yesterday on my Commodore 64, and it’s quite intuitive that way, given that you never have to touch the keyboard at all.

 

[Ladonna]

I played about 5 hours of pool of radiance and ran out of steam today. I see the appeal, and I'm fine with no mouse support. But there is just so much trash combat and so much fighting with the interface. This is not a well designed keyboard interface (see any roguelike for comparison). I like the setting, general story, and general idea of the game. I like the d and d implementation. But there are just so many games out there that I don't have to fight with. I'm sure it was awesome in 1988, but it's pretty rough now.

Believe it or not, the game is better on a system that allows you to use a joystick. I was playing it just yesterday on my Commodore 64, and it’s quite intuitive that way, given that you never have to touch the keyboard at all.

Agreed. I love the C64 version and finished it again only recently. Though the Amiga version is very nice too.

 

[CuckMasher]

I played about 5 hours of pool of radiance and ran out of steam today. I see the appeal, and I'm fine with no mouse support. But there is just so much trash combat and so much fighting with the interface. This is not a well designed keyboard interface (see any roguelike for comparison). I like the setting, general story, and general idea of the game. I like the d and d implementation. But there are just so many games out there that I don't have to fight with. I'm sure it was awesome in 1988, but it's pretty rough now.

Believe it or not, the game is better on a system that allows you to use a joystick. I was playing it just yesterday on my Commodore 64, and it’s quite intuitive that way, given that you never have to touch the keyboard at all.

Agreed. I love the C64 version and finished it again only recently. Though the Amiga version is very nice too.

I think another issue for me is that optimal play would be really tedious. I have a fight with like 30 kobolds so i can see what I should probably do is get into a chokepoint, sleep the front row of kobolds and then switch my party to ranged weapons to take out the kobolds further back. Then rinse and repeat. The problem is that doing that will be 30 minutes of not interesting gameplay, and at the point im at in the game i think also required to even beat the encounter.

I am using gbc and have turned on most of its features which helps a lot.

I really want to like these games so maybe I will try the 3rd Krynn game. But seeing as how ive never played fallout 2 or arcanum ...

 

[octavius]

Sleep the archers, and Sweep the rest!

(Why the hell is the Sweep attack not used in more games?)